Thursday, July 1, 2010

F1: Lewis Hamilton still exempt from rules

The European GP in Valencia was a farce. In short, Lewis Hamilton overtook the safety car after it came out, and was penalized with a drive-through penalty twenty laps later.

Hamilton and his defenders insist the rules were applied properly. Given the ham-handed way the FIA writes its rules, that may well be so, but passing the safety car like Hamilton did is appalling. Not only is it dangerous to the driver and the track marshals, but it shows a total disregard of the rules. In Alonso's words, even a child knows you can't pass the safety car like that. Had, say, Kamui Kobayashi pulled a stunt like that, he would have been disqualified and probably had his racing license taken away from him. Not so with the golden boy.

Having done what he did, Hamilton was given a drive-through penalty, so late in the race that it didn't affect his standing. Whether the penalty was technically correct or not, here's what I can't accept. The stewards knew fully well that nearly all other drivers had suffered from the safety car except Hamilton. They knew that they were giving Hamilton a penalty that wouldn't affect his race at all, and they still gave it. So in effect, they are fully consciously rewarding Hamilton for breaking the rules. And this is a sport?

In Malaysia, Hamilton blatantly broke the rules by weaving in front of Renault's Vitaly Petrov. It's not a huge exaggeration to say that again, even a child knows that's against the rules. All Hamilton got was a "warning", or in other words, nothing. In the Chinese GP he nearly crashed into Sebastian Vettel in the pit lane, resulting in, again, a "warning". More on that one later. Now he overtakes the safety car and again, nothing. Does he really have a blank cheque to do anything on the track now?

I'll just quote the Runoff Area's Twitter feed; after stewarding like this, F1 satire is dead. How do you make fun of this stuff?

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